Ebrahim Harvey left field The black left-leaning Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Pan Africanist Congress over the past few months have taken the first serious steps towards unity. This is part of the broader flux and ferment in South African politics, as seen by the merger of the New National Party and the Democratic Party into the Democratic Alliance (DA), which unites a declining Afrikaner nationalism with a rising English liberal bourgeois party, within which, however, still lurks covert racism. This marriage is driven by a desperate desire to undo the electoral strength of the ruling African National Congress.
This political realignment poses the question: where is the left outside Parliament? Will they, tiny and in decline, inevitably wither away as a political, organisational and ideological force in South African politics or can they still harness the little that remains and build a significant force outside Parliament in order to get into it in 2004? While the left is virtually absent in Parliament the fact is that parliamentary politics will dominate for a long time. Only a party to the left of the ANC and rooted in the trade unions can present a serious challenge to it. Therefore the need for the left to survive and grow, even if slowly, is of inestimable importance. No party at present, including the PAC and Azapo, has a clear and bold socialist programme that represents the interests of workers. This must inspire the left to assess the prospects for forging a new democratic socialist party. This party is necessary because the South African Communist Party has failed to give clear and strong leadership to the working class and it is very unlikely that the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will leave the alliance with the ANC and form such a party. But within the alliance, rest assured, it will remain unable to assert its organisational and class independence unhindered. Therefore breaking free from the fetters of ANC domination is urgent.
The critical question is: for how long will the ANC leadership succeed in containing the struggles of Cosatu? Or will it eventually spill beyond these confines, which sometimes happens, driven by worsening conditions, and raise the prospect and necessity of building, with workers who already see the need for it, an independent socialist party? One thing is certain: it is going to become increasingly difficult for the ANC to keep Cosatu in check as the growing crisis takes its toll on it. Since 1994 workers have faced various attacks from their employers and the ANC. For how much longer will workers in the alliance endure this situation? Can the ANC continue to be both friend and foe at the same time – and if it can, for how much longer before these contradictions explode in the face of the alliance? But what are the prospects for the birth of a new party? How many workers now see the need for one and are prepared to build it – and how many will see it that way tomorrow? While it is impossible to even form a rough estimate to answer these questions, it is certain that the SACP is tiny and has failed to build a mass party. Many workers are not happy with the fact that the ANC has failed to build a better life for them. Workers in Cosatu have been asking serious questions about their future in the alliance. Cosatu is critical for the formation of a new socialist party because, more than any other union federation, it is located in the most important and strategic sectors of the economy. Although it is in alliance with the ANC its members are free to join or form any party of their choice. The need for a new party to work with and try to win over these workers is as important as forming the party itself.
Although they vote for the ANC, a big majority of Cosatu’s members are not members of it or the SACP. They are therefore approachable and recruitable. In an open democracy there should be no untouchable turf which belongs to one party. Workers must speak their minds and any party must be free to organise and campaign anywhere. That’s democracy at its vibrant best.
The ANC often appears to lapse complacently into the delusory belief that it will necessarily rule for a long time. Across our borders in Zimbabwe we are witnessing the steady disintegration of the ruling Zanu-PF, even though it appeared that, like his predecessor, Ian Smith, President Robert Mugabe thought his party would rule for 1E000 years. The difference is this: the working class here is much more developed and may want a new regime much sooner than did workers there. Zimbabwe has another lesson: if an alternative opposition party emerges from a mass trade-union base it can quickly become a giant with menacing proportions. A party that has its roots in the unions can develop much more quickly than one which has to go out and organise workers. It can be harnessed for a revolutionary purpose overnight. That is precisely why the biggest problem for the ANC would be the departure of Cosatu from the alliance. If it were to happen the ANC would lose much of its strength and could lose power to such an opposition. Indeed Cosatu is the Achilles heel of the ANC-led alliance.
These and other matters are very important for the left to consider and debate because their own fate and future are tied up with how and when these questions are answered. This could be addressed at a national conference which is necessary and towards which the left should now start working. Despite the “democratic miracle” of 1994 the working class has not had half its say, let alone its full say, in the future of this country.